


A Beautiful Beast

by Gildedmuse



Series: 10 Casts A-Crossing [3]
Category: Across the Universe (2007), Hair - MacDermot/Rado/Ragni
Genre: Challenge Response, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Just These Two Casts Meeting & Hanging Out, M/M, Niche Fandom Fic, Short & Sweet, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 05:55:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18685483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildedmuse/pseuds/Gildedmuse
Summary: Max is just trying to relax some, what with only two days before he's shipping out, when he meets up with some... Interesting characters.





	A Beautiful Beast

**Author's Note:**

> [I had this saved but I'm not sure when I wrote it. It might have been as part of the 10 Casts A-Crossing Challenge.]

**A Beautiful Beast**

 

“If the world could live in Peace than the Universe would finally open to us! We are the only things stopping the whole of Creation from accepting us into the stars!”

 

Max isn’t sure where he’s going, he just took off from the apartment and started walking. He didn’t want to be there, not at that moment. Maybe it’s the draft, lurking in the back of his mind and promising that soon it‘ll appear, tearing him away from this life. Maybe it’s just that he doesn’t want to have to listen to Jude and his baby sister going at it anymore.

 

Okay, it’s the last one.

 

So he just takes off, claiming he’s going down to the store for some cigarettes. And he walks right by the store, so who knows where he is going. Max doesn’t.

 

It turns out he’s going to the park, or that is where he ends up. He would have just kept walking, too, except this girl just sort of… appears.

 

It takes Max a few seconds to respond.

 

“Uh, right…” He tries to move around her, which seems like it would be pretty easy, except she follows his every little movement. “That’s nice.”

 

“We have to open ourselves to the world!” The girl declares, face right in Max’s so he can’t see anything but her. “Have you seen a man by the name of Frank Mills?”

 

“Crissy!” Just as fast as she’d popped up beside him, someone pulls her back. “Crissy,” the man says, shaking his head. “There you are. We thought you’d disappeared!”

 

“Not yet,” Crissy promises, kissing the boy’s cheek before she sort of half wanders off, towards a group sprawled out in the park. Max has seen them around before. Hard to miss seeing them, really, but this is the first time he’s actually notices them.

 

“She didn’t scare you, did she?” The boy asks, smiling at Max. “We gave her some really strong stuff and Crissy, she’s just a little crazy anyway.”

 

“No, nah it’s cool,” Max says, grinning back because he has no idea what else to do. The boy talking to him has hair almost down to his chest and wild eyes. Max isn’t sure what to make of him. But he is pretty sure he doesn’t want to turn back up at the apartment, at least not for a little while. “Not guessing you have any more of whatever it was, huh?”

 

He isn’t sure it’ll work, but the boy laughs loud and strong and tosses an arm around Max’s shoulder, leading him off to the group. “Hey, guys! Hey, everyone! Look what I found!”

 

He shoves Max out there in front of the group of kids, mostly around his age and all of them looking pretty dirty and most in various stages of undress. Max smiles, giving a small wave. Only a few of them even look back.

 

“Hey there,” one of them says, sitting right there on their ground close to Max’s feet. “What’s your name?”

 

“Max.” The guy holds up a joint and Max gladly takes it, sitting himself down next to the kid as he takes in a deep breath. “Thanks, man.”

 

“Max, huh? I’m Claude.” He smiles, taking the joint when Max is done and passing it on. “This is Shelia, and Berger, and Woof and…” he laughs, shaking his head. “I don’t know. Who are you?”

 

The smallest girl that Max has ever seen, she is sitting right across the Claude, and when he speaks to her, she turns a bright red. “Suzy.”

 

“Right,” Claude laughs again. They all seem to be smiling, laughing, relaxing. Hell, Max wishes he’d come to see them earlier. No one here can‘t look at him because he‘s been drafted, and no one here has taken to ignoring him for his sister. “Right, I forgot. Suzy. She’s new.”

 

“Hey, Suzy,” Max says, reaching across and shaking her hand, smiling at her. This is easy. So much easier than being back home and putting up with everything there. The joint gets back to Max and he takes another hit, waiting for the drug to sink into his system. Maybe they drug test for the army. Maybe they’ll take one look at his piss and kick him out.

 

Probably not, but it’s worth thinking about and gives Max an excuse to take a few extra breaths of this smoke. He lets it wash over him, like the conversation which goes on for hours, and Max can only follows pieces of it.

 

He speaks up a few times, joins in the random conversations that pop up every now and again, but mostly he just takes the joint when it comes to him, and when that is over, he leans back and closes his eyes and just listens.

 

“I’m telling you,” one of the girls is saying. The one not Suzy. “I’m telling you, I am the truest Daughter of Liberty, I am… Berger, are you listening to me?”

 

“What about tomorrow? I think we could get some tomorrow, for real cheap if we‘re lucky. Maybe if Shelia offers to sleep with them.”

 

“I am the Daughter of Liberty. I won’t be fucked by Capitalism again.”

 

“I’d have to ask my parents for money.. They fucking hate when I do that. They’re always telling me to cut my hair or get a job. What about Sunday? I could sneak into the house Sunday, while they‘re at church.”

 

“Hey, was that blue box there before?”

 

“It’s that guy’s… Remember that guy? The one who asked about the time. He’s late for something. Told us to watch his box for him.”

 

“Right… Right. Are we watching it? Where’d it go?”

 

“Fuck.”

 

“Sounds like a plan.” Max only opens his eyes because suddenly he’s got someone on his lap. Berger, it turns out, hanging off him and batting his eyelashes.

 

Max snorts, giving Berger a half shove that doesn’t really knock him off his lap at all. “What are you doing?”

 

“Nothing!” Berger declares, and then, “Everything!”

 

“Yeah?” And, okay, even with a slight high Max isn’t sure he follows Berger’s logic. But then, he doesn’t really care, either. “Sounds like fun.”

 

“You can always join,” Berger tells him, patting Max on the chest before finally moving off his lap and back to his own spot in the grass. “Although it might take a while.”

 

“I’ve got the time.” All he has to do is be back in time to fight a war, right? Still, even that seems better to Max than going back to that apartment right now and facing Jude and Lucy and the way they look at him now, or try not to.

 

“You get it,” Berger says, approving with a bright smile. Like, almost too bright. Max isn‘t sure how he can even smile like that, it seems like it should be close to impossible. “You know what I mean.”

 

“You don’t know what you mean, Berger!” And Max must have missed something, because Shelia is suddenly standing up, feet pounding across the grass. Yeah, Max definitely missed something.

 

“Shelia, wait…” And Claude is scrambling up, following after her, looking a little desperate.

 

It sort of stops Max, just a moment. “What’s up with those two?” He asks, nodding towards the couple as Shelia storms off with Claude at her heels.

 

“Let me explain,” Berger says, smiling brilliantly at Max, so bright that Max can hardly keep his eyes steady. “Claude is in love with Shelia, and Shelia is in love with me…”

 

“Yeah?” And doesn’t Max know how that goes? Well, expect that Jude and Lucy are in love with each other, but he thinks he can understand how Claude must feel. “And what about you?” He asks, grinning back at Berger, giving the boy a half shove back in the grass. “Who are you in love with?”

 

That smile of his manages to grow even bigger, and who even knows how. “You.”

 

It’s a lie. It’s shit, and Max knows it’s shit but he doesn’t care because he’s spent days and nights watching Jude and Lucy be so much in love that it’s starting to hurt. It’s just nice to hear that someone loves him. Even if it’s a high, out of it’s mind sort of love.

 

Right there in broad daylight, in the middle of the park, Max laughs and leans in and kisses this boy.

 

No surprise that Berger tastes like a joint, that he kisses like a slow smoke. He starts the kiss with only his lips, and then coaxes Max into giving him more, and Max goes along with it, holding in his breath when they kisses until he finally has to bring himself up for air.

 

And then Max says, “Two days.” It just spills out of his mouth when he isn’t thinking about it. “I have to leave for the army in two days.”

 

“Well then,” Suzy says, her voice sounding a bit in awe. “You should definitely fuck. Everyone should get one last fuck before they go.”

 

“Yeah…” Woof agrees, his head tilted as he studies the two of them. “You spend your last night getting fucked, the army will love that.”

 

“Right…” Max leaves in two days. Then he’ll be gone, he’ll disappear across the ocean and who knows if he’ll ever get to see any of his friends again, and suddenly Max has to go back to the apartment, he doesn’t care what Jude or Lucy is doing, he has to see them.

 

Two days, that’s all he has left.

 

“I’ve gotta go.” He mutters, pushing himself up, trying to straighten his clothes and hair so that his little sister won’t wonder what he’s been up to. He isn’t sure she’ll even ask, but he still tries. “I’m gonna late.”

 

“Come back if you ever need a fuck!” Berger shouts at him as Max turns and jogs towards the road.  
  
Even in a hurry, he can’t help laughing, turning to wave goodbye to the tribe. “I‘ll keep it in mind!”


End file.
